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14.4.16

Love... hate...

I have a love hate relationship with A&E. I think you can generally only get this love hate relationship when you've had to go to it and experience it quite a lot. I love A&E for what it's done for me in the past they were amazing when I had Sepsis and I can't fault anything they did for me that day absolutely the most splendid job ever! However the past few times haven't been amazing but I continue to be thankful for absolutely everything they have done and continue to do for me.

Yesterday I woke up with a low lung function it normally sits at 2.53 and I was blowing between 2.19 and 2.24 and it just wasn't going any higher and my temperature was 37.8 as well. We generally have to keep an eye on these things and if our lung function goes 10% below our regular and accompanied with a high temp we have to ring our hospitals and let them know. I felt really crap yesterday achey and shakey and just generally awful. I went to the GP and she was absolutely lovely and although my chest sounds okay she put me on some antibiotics as I'm coughing up a little bit of phlegm but she was concerned about my high heart rate and my low blood pressure.

I got home and had got into bed and then my GP decided to ring me and say that she was really concerned about my high heart rate and low blood pressure and that she wouldn't be able to live with herself if something happened so she said she would rather that I went to A&E. I did as I was told because I guess it's better to be safe than sorry and luckily she had rung ahead of time so they were expecting me so there wasn't too much waiting around which was great because nowadays I enter a hospital or more specifically A&E and I get anxious thinking about all the germs I'm sitting around. They were great when I got there and I got a side room so no germs for me, whoop! They did all there lovely tests and everything was what they considered borderline not bad but not great either. I had a lovely doctor who was really wonderful she did absolutely everything she possibly could for me she gave me fluids to try and get my BP up, didn't really work but i'm kind of renowned for having a low BP anyway.

Now my only issue I have with A&E is this 4 hour limit they have. I reached my 4 hour limit so they wanted to send me up to a ward where they were just going to start all over again and they just wanted to send me up to a ward to be "observed" by this point I was feeling much better than I had in the morning and I had redone my lung function several times and it was starting to creep up a little bit so I was feeling reassured within myself. Papworth had even said it was okay but I think hospitals especially with transplant patients don't want to be responsible if something had happened if I had left and they had said it was okay for me to leave. So I had the head nurse come and see me and say they wanted to take me upstairs just to observe me whereby I proceeded to tell them that I would just be taking up a bed unnecessarily and I'd rather not have to start the whole process all over again. She asked why I was so against going upstairs and I told her about my last experience where I had to wait 9 hours up there for a pre arranged injection and that was something they knew about let alone going upstairs just to be observed for a unknown something. I also said if Papworth are okay with me leaving then so am I. I certainly would rather feel ill at home than in a hospital where I'm going to get no sleep and have my Ob's done every hour.

So it's definitely a love hate relationship with them because I feel like A&E do an absolutely superb job but because they have this 4 hour time constraint that they are limited too they have to ship you off a little too soon and then that means people are in hospital longer than they really need to be because they're having to go up to a ward where things are just started all over which is just absurd to me. I know that's by no means their fault and I do feel guilty because I have unfortunately been in A&E longer than the 4 hours I'm supposed to be in there and that has resulted in them being fined. I remember being told by one of the nurses there was a massive meeting on me and why I had been in there longer than I should have been. LOL.

So I'm ill, I have a infection but hopefully the antibiotics are kicking it into shape and I'll be right as rain soon as my doctor was lovely and gave me the higher dose so feeling sick for a week will be worth it if it means I'm better quicker :-D

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I'm in my 20's and after waiting 3 years,
I underwent a heart and double lung transplant because I suffered from a illness called Pulmonary Hypertension.

This blog is where I documented that journey and will continue to document all the amazing highs and the lows post-transplant. I hope to continue to raise awareness for both PH and organ donation and I would love for you to continue to share this journey with me.